He Accused Me Of Stealing But I Heard The Truth Chapter 31
He crouched down to her level.
“For me?”
“For you.” Maisie placed the candy in his hand. “Mommy says you’ve been helping other sick kids. This is your reward.”
Derek closed his hand around the small candy, his eyes reddening.
“Can I give you a hug?”
Maisie took one step back.
“Not yet.”
“Okay.”
He didn’t reach for her. He just slipped the candy into his suit pocket.
“When it’s okay, you can tell me.”
“You have to be patient,” Maisie said seriously. “My teacher says patient people don’t keep asking.”
Derek gave a brief, broken smile. It wasn’t handsome, but for the first time, it wasn’t fake.
“I’ll remember that.”
I stayed where I was.
As the wind rose, petals blew down the street, separating us.
Derek stood and looked at me across the distance. He didn’t say my name. He just gave me a small nod.
I nodded back.
There was only a street between us, but there were also six years of pain and betrayal lying there, too.
I would not go back to him, and his admission of guilt would never erase the past.
At last, he understood that respecting boundaries didn’t mean stepping back for a little while and waiting for me to fall into line. It meant that even if I never came back, he still had to stop where I told him to stop.
Maisie ran back to my side, her small shoes crushing fallen petals.
“Mommy, he said he’ll come again next time.”
“Do you want him to?”
“Sometimes.” She looked up at me. “Sometimes not. When I’m a little bigger, I’ll tell him myself.”
I took her hand.
“Okay. We’re not in a hurry.”
The road ahead was still long.
But this time, we weren’t running, and we weren’t begging anyone to let us stay.
We were simply walking home.
After we got back to the apartment, my legal aid lawyer forwarded a court notice.
Rachel had filed a motion to lift the asset freeze. In her sworn declaration, she claimed that every transfer and every arrangement concerning the clinic, six years ago, had been carried out under Derek’s direct verbal orders.
The next morning, Derek would have to give an answer he could never take back—one that would force a choice between protecting himself and protecting Weston Group.